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EU News from the European Political and Policy NewspaperSat, 25 May 2019 05:16:05 +0000en-UShourly1Kazakhstan’s presidential candidates prepare for TV debateshttps://www.neweurope.eu/article/kazakhstans-presidential-candidates-prepare-for-tv-debates/
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/kazakhstans-presidential-candidates-prepare-for-tv-debates/#respondFri, 24 May 2019 22:14:32 +0000https://www.neweurope.eu/?post_type=post&p=528932

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NUR-SULTAN, Kazakhstan – Candidates for the presidency of Kazakhstan will take part in a television debate in the nations’ capital, Nur-Sultan, on the eve of the elections, a member of the Central Election Commission of Kazakhstan Lyazzat Suleimen said on 24 May.

The participants will have a chance to present their election programme, with the topic of the first round focusing on economic development priorities in Kazakhstan, which will be followed up by a question and answer session involving the participants.

The topic of the second round will zero in on the social modernisation of Kazakhstan, followed by questions from the moderators.

The third round, which will be framed around the topic is “Voice to the voters” will allow average citizens a chance to directly address the candidates.

At the same time, the Central Election Commission noted that they do not know whether the candidate from the Nur Otan party and the current president of Kazakhstan, Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev, will be able to take part in the debate as he will take part in a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Council.

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EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, met in Brussels with Cuba’s Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, to discuss bilateral relations and latest developments in the region.
The European Union-Cuba relations have been reinforced under the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement, and both expressed satisfaction on the progress.
They spoke about the preparations for the next meeting of the EU-Cuba Joint Council scheduled for September, as well as the latest developments in the region, in particular in Venezuela.

US sanctions against the controversial Nord Stream-2 pipeline from Russia to Germany are unlikely stop the project’s construction but may prevent Russian gas monopoly Gazprom from using the pipeline at full capacity in the future, Alexei Kokin, a senior oil and gas analyst at UralSib Financial Corp in Moscow, told New Europe on 23 May.

US Energy Secretary Rick Perry said on 21 May that a sanctions bill putting restrictions on companies involved in the Nord Stream-2 project would come in the “not too distant future”. “The opposition to Nord Stream-2 is still very much alive and well in the United States,” Reuters quoted Perry as telling a briefing on a visit to Kyiv for the inauguration of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“The United States Senate is going to pass a bill, the House is going to approve it, and it’s going to go to the President and he’s going to sign it, that is going to put sanctions on Nord Stream-2,” Perry added.

Reacting on the threat of sanctions against Nord Stream-2, a European Commission spokeswoman told New Europe on 24 May, “We have no comment to make to these comments.”

Meanwhile, Reuters quoted a German Economy Ministry spokeswoman as saying on 22 May Berlin has taken note of the threat of US sanctions being placed on Nord Stream-2 but rejected sanctions that have extraterritorial effect.

Nord Stream-2 EU Representative Sebastian Sass stressed that the project is being implemented based on a comprehensive legal framework of permitting procedures and following clearly defined legal requirements. “We are of course monitoring these developments and political statements that you refer to, but I am not in the position to speculate about them,” he told New Europe. “Our investors are committed to the project almost all of our project’s CAPEX (capital expenditure) has been contracted,” he added.

The US, Ukraine and a number of European states are opposing the Nord Stream-2 pipeline, arguing that the Moscow-backed project would increase the EU’s reliance on Russian gas and reduce that transit of gas via Ukraine.

But Kokin argued that Nord Stream-2 construction couldn’t be halted. “They (the sanctions) probably won’t affect the construction but judging by the experience of the first stage they might affect the utilisation rights in the future if for some reason Gazprom is unable to use the new pipeline 100% then that could happen,” he said. “It’s more likely than not to be built, to be physically completed but whether it’s going to be used to the full capacity is a different question,” Kokin added.

The UralSib oil and gas analyst said there is more than one direction the sanctions are taking. “I think it’s more likely that the straightforward sanctions will have zero impact, will have no impact, but it’s possible that some of the European countries, Poland for instance, could be able eventually to block the new project from working at full capacity. That’s a bit of a different approach. It doesn’t mean that the United States will be able to do this directly,” Kokin said. “It’s more of an indirect obstacle to the project, but to me is a bigger potential problem that I think will be resolved over time. But, if you are talking about basically any threats by the United States to sanction individual contractors, I don’t think they will be very effective. I think it’s a bit too late at this stage to have much practical impact on the construction itself,” he added.

Kokin acknowledged US sanctions against European companies that have done nothing to slow Nord Stream’s progress could hurt the companies’ US interests. “It could be a risk. I’m not saying it’s not a risk but my own feeling is that at this stage, the construction stage, the risks of no completion to Gazprom are not as high,” he said.

He argued that Washington in the future would be focusing not so much in physically obstructing the construction of Nord Stream-2 as preventing the pipeline’s utilisation at full capacity.

“Obviously there are a number of issues involved which basically have to do with competition among various suppliers of gas to the European Union that could be raised by EU member countries in opposition to this project being able to use internal European Union pipelines,” he said, adding. “This is a more systemic approach that could be used against Gazprom.”

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]]>https://www.neweurope.eu/article/us-sanctions-may-be-too-late-to-stop-nord-stream-2-construction/feed/0Russian oil: There may be gunkhttps://www.neweurope.eu/article/russian-oil-there-may-be-gunk/
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/russian-oil-there-may-be-gunk/#respondFri, 24 May 2019 17:54:35 +0000https://www.neweurope.eu/?post_type=post&p=528921

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As Russia is in the process of removing contaminated oil from the Druzhba export pipeline, the real cost of damage to European refiners, time to remove tainted oil and restore exports as well as the effect on Russia’s status as an energy supplier, remains unclear.

“It’s really hard to tell what impact is going to have,” Alexei Kokin, a senior oil and gas analyst at UralSib Financial Corp in Moscow, told New Europe on 23 May. “There is not enough information at this point to say what the consequences are going to be in the long run,” he added.

According to Reuters, the crisis has escalated since Belarus told oil refiners and pipeline operators in Europe nearly four weeks ago that the crude heading down the 5,500-kilometre Druzhba pipeline was heavily contaminated with organic chloride, which is used to clean oil wells and accelerate the flow of crude.

Russia had to stop exports via the Druzhba pipeline to Poland and Germany at the northern branch of the line and to Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic in the south.

Russia is using rail, storage tanks and ships to remove contaminated oil from an export pipeline and has so far extracted around 2 million tonnes of the tainted oil – or over a third of volumes hit, Reuters reported on 24 May.

A total of around 5 million tonnes could have been contaminated by organic chloride and up to six months are needed to fully restore the flows, according to the Belarusian operator of a section of the Druzhba pipeline. Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine still have the lion’s share of contaminated crude in their pipeline systems – or up to 2 million tonnes, with another roughly 1 million stuck in Poland and Germany, Reuters quoted traders and industry sources as saying.

Until tainted oil is removed from the pipeline inside Russia and Belarus normal flows or clean oil to export markets cannot resume.

“Technologically, I think eventually all this contaminated oil will have to be diluted and over time it will be diluted with good and eventually all this bad oil in storage will be mixed with good oil until the concentration goes down below the acceptable threshold. So technologically that’s doable, it’s just probably a very long process depending obviously on the concentration of the contaminant,” Kokin said.

Asked if the oil contamination would affect Russia’s reputation, Kokin said, “It seems like something that was completely unexpected and unprecedented and something that just never happened before. It feels that nobody was ready for this. Russian companies weren’t ready and obviously the Europeans weren’t ready for this but hopefully it won’t repeat itself in the future.”

Reliance on Russian energy

However, Justin Urquhart Stewart, director at Seven Investment Management in London, said relying heavily on Russia for energy supplies is a risky proposition.

“Frankly, our politicians should have realised that the very day they started signing contracts with Russia,” Urquhart Stewart told New Europe in an interview on 22 May. “It was always going to be a risk and I think that now if you look over the examples of the last few years of constraints in the reliability of consistent delivery in the pipelines whether it’s issues with Ukraine and now, in terms of the caliber and quality of the product, Germany especially needs be extremely concerned about how dependent it is upon Russian oil and they should be seeking urgently at least for political reasons have the ability to stand independently of Russia,” Urquhart Stewart said.

On 15 May, Interfax quoted Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak as saying that it would take a month to estimate the total cost of damage from contaminated oil in the Druzhba pipeline.

Kokin told New Europe that it’s too early to access the damage to European refineries. “Eventually it will be accessed the amount of damage and probably will be measured in terms of the cost of repairing those refineries and bringing them back to normal shape. It will take time. It won’t be clear overnight,” Kokin said.

The real cost of Russia’s dirty oil

Urquhart Stewart asked, “Who’s actually going to pay for it?” “If it is substandard quality product then you should be refusing payment on future deliveries until the previous loss has actually been either sorted out or compensation has been made for. This is straightforward contractual law and that’s where politics can get in the way,” the London-based expert argued. “It’s not just the claims for poor quality goods. It’s also the associated damages with this in terms of the delay, reputation and the further quality down the line in terms of further cleaning of the product,” he added.

Western buyers of Russian oil were taken by surprise and left in the dark by a lack of communication from Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft about how long the crisis would take to resolve, Urquhart Stewart said. “At that time, they were too concerned about giving assured delivery rather than necessarily questioning the caliber and quality of it so I think this story is going run a lot longer,” he argued.

Kokin said who is going to pay depends on the contractual relationship between the Russian exporters, Transneft and the European offtakers. “It’s hard to tell who is going to pay but someone definitely is going to pay. I don’t think that those Russian companies that are supposed to pay that they will try to wiggle out of this. I don’t think so. I think they will do what’s required because major relationships are at stake,” the Moscow-based expert said.

Energy politics

Urquhart Stewart said Russia’s worst oil supply disruption comes at a time when many European politicians are warning against increasing reliance on Russia for energy supplies.

“The damage relating to it is it going to significantly affect other supplies as well because that means it will have to be replaced by somebody else, therefore you’re going to find a constriction in supply and now if you are now going to be also seeing further concerns over political issues with Russia, it’s going to further add aggravation at a time of great sensitivity to the diplomatic issues between them,” he said. “But now it’s the time actually to be extremely firm with the caliber of this because you do not wish to be associated to poor quality goods. You must be rejecting that quality and making sure that you have further assurances for the future. Otherwise, you will be seen as been politically very weak indeed like Germany may well seem to be in the moment,” Urquhart Stewart argued.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly scolded the boss of pipeline operator Transneft over the contamination scandal, Reuters reported on 1 May.

But Urquhart Stewart said the issue is restoring the quality of oil. “That’s lovely headlines but in terms of what is actually been done, it’s not so much the people, as far as the companies are concerned, they want to know that they will be properly reimbursed for it. The fact a few unfortunate souls are gonna lose their jobs, well that’s the least of the issues. Frankly, that will be all about Putin trying to appear big and butch and trying to assert himself. No, no, it all needs to come back to the caliber and quality of product being produced. Are they reliable enough to produce quality products or are they are actually just in a position where they cannot be relied upon to produce good quality stuff and therefore source alternative supplies?” he asked, adding: “Russia does not need that now.”

Speaking at an informal meeting of the OECD Ministerial Council in Paris on 23 May, WTO’s Director-General Roberto Azevêdourged ministers’ action on systemic issues and warned that current progress on fisheries subsidies would need to intensify in order to have a successful outcome by the end of the year.
The meeting was about how to advance negotiations on fisheries subsidies, and what WTO reform and negotiating outcomes should be targeted for the 12th Ministerial Conference in Kazakhstan in June 2020.
“To advance, we will need greater political engagement and a greater acceptance of the need for compromise.”, he said, commenting on the fisheries subsidies negotiations. He also updated ministers on work in other negotiating areas and the current debate on WTO reform, saying: “We need both to address systemic challenges and to advance our negotiating work, in parallel. Positive engagement at ministerial level in the coming months will be crucial.”

The 2019 annual report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has concluded that the Turkish government continues to crack down on the anti-government Gülen Movement, discriminate against the minority Alevi community, and interfere in the affairs of what remains of the country’s historic Armenian and Greek Orthodox populations.

The Commission, or USCIRF, said the authoritarian government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan needs to begin fully endorse the European Court of Human Rights rulings on freedom of religion or belief; ensure the education curriculum remains inclusive of all of Turkey’s religious groups; streamline measures that would permit non-Sunni communities to apply for government funding, and publicly rebuke government officials who make anti-Semitic statements or other derogatory statements about religious communities in Turkey.

The USCIRF is a federal government commission created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 and its commissioners are appointed directly by the US President and the leadership of both political parties in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

According to USCIRF’s analysis, the state of human rights and civil liberties in Turkey has become critical in the wake of Erdogan’s response to an alleged failed coup attempt in July 2016.

Tens of thousands of followers of the US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, accused by Ankara of orchestrating the coup, continued to be purged from public service, while also being arbitrarily detained and arrested.

Turkey has also been engaging in or tolerating religious freedom violations that meet at least one of the elements of the “systematic, ongoing, egregious” standard for designation as a “country of particular concern”, according to the USCIRF.

Traditionally, non-Muslim students from the Armenian, Greek, Alevis, and Jewish have been exempted from mandatory state school coursed that focus on Islam. This practice, however, appears to have come to an end as the ruling Islamist AK Party is putting more pressure on the communities to have their primary and secondary students attend the state-mandated Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge course.

For their part, the Alevis, Shiites who are the largest religious minority in Turkey, are “routinely” denied exemption despite a 2014 European Court of Human Rights ruling in that the course should not be compulsory and that students should not be required to disclose their religious identity.

The USCIRF cited a report on hate speech by the Hrant Dink Foundation, a local nongovernmental organisation, that 427 instances of hate speech from January to April 2018 that specifically targeted Jews. News articles and headlines frequently made reference to Jews when referring to the state of Israel and mentioned Jews in negative media coverage related to the state of Turkish-Israeli relations, says the report.

Other Christian minorities had also experienced recent discrimination, according to the report, including Jehovah’s Witnesses who continued to be denied the right to conscientious objection to military service and face prosecution, fines, and imprisonment for the exercise of their beliefs.

The European Commission has announced that it will support 128 Innovative Training Networks, involving 1389 organisations in 56 countries, under its Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Programme.
“Promising PhD candidates will gain experience in different working environments while developing transferable skills that are highly appreciated by employers”, said Tibor Navracsics, Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport.
The selected projects cover a variety of research areas such as engineering and communication, environment, health and paleontology.

The EU Civil Protection Mechanism has been activated to tackle forest fires, after a request for assistance from the Israeli authorities on 23 May.
In an immediate response, the European Union has already helped mobilize 4 firefighting planes, two of which from Italy and two from Cyprus, to be dispatched swiftly to the affected areas.
The European Union’s 24/7 Emergency Response Coordination Center is in regular contact with the Israeli authorities to closely monitor the situation and channel the EU assistance.
The Commission has recently launched the first fleet of firefighting aircraft under the new rescEU system to tackle natural disasters.

The European Commission adopted the rules to ensure increasing drone traffic across Europe is safe. These rules will apply to all operators of drones, both professionals and those flying drones for leisure.
The rules address safety and contain important building blocks to mitigate drone related security risks, and will replace existing national rules. As of 2020 drone operators will be registered with national authorities, who will be able to define so-called “no-fly zones” and to prevent unlawful drone activities.
Following the technical requirements for drones is another key deliverable under the Commission’s Aviation Strategy for Europe. The European Commission is also developing an institutional, regulatory and architectural framework for the provision of U-space services.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May finallygave in to the intense pressure from her fellow Conservative party members andannounced 7 June as the date for her resignation date,

Her announcement came only a day after the British public cast their votes in the European elections and after months of trying to push through a withdrawal agreement with the EU.

May tried but failed on multiple occasions to get House of Commons to back the Withdrawal Agreement, a point that she said was “Ia matter of deep regret that I have not been able to deliver Brexit.”

The outgoing prime minister made it clear to her successor that they will have to learn to compromise before she fought back tears and added, “It has been the honour of my life to serve as prime minister as the second female prime minister but certainly not the last.”

May is due to attend an EU-28 Summit in Brussels after the elections conclude on 26 May. The process to find a new leader for Britain’s Tory party is expected to being within the next week.

]]>https://www.neweurope.eu/article/uk-prime-minister-theresa-may-to-step-down-on-7-june/feed/0Genocide and war crimes cases in the EU risehttps://www.neweurope.eu/article/genocide-and-war-crimes-cases-in-the-eu-rise/
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/genocide-and-war-crimes-cases-in-the-eu-rise/#respondFri, 24 May 2019 09:39:55 +0000https://www.neweurope.eu/?post_type=post&p=528889

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The number of new cases of genocide and war crimes rose by a third over the last three years, with 1430 new investigations launched in 2018, which is the highest number documented since the creation of the Genocide Network. These cases concern crimes committed worldwide.
This was one of the major topics of discussion at the 4th EU Day against Impunity for Genocide, Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes, organised by Eurojust, the Romanian EU Council Presidency, the European Commission and the Genocide Network. The event coincides with the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the four Geneva Conventions.
“The European Union is an area of security and justice and we cannot and will not be a safe haven for whoever has committed these atrocities anywhere in the world.”, said Eurojust’s President Ladislav Hamran.

The European Investment Bank has signed a loan agreement with A/S Femern Landanlaeg, the company managing the Danish contribution to building of the “Fehmarn Belt” railway connection between southern Denmark and Hamburg in Germany.
The project is located on the Scandinavian Mediterranean TEN-T Core Network Corridor. It concerns construction of new tracks, upgrading existing ones to higher speed limits, electrification and implementation of the European Railway Traffic Management System.

Qiemo County is in the Bayin’gholin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, part of western China’s Xinjiang region in the heart of what was once the ancient Silk Road. In 2014, the Chinese government began a Sinofication programme aimed at reducing the non-Han Chinese population living in Qiemo County by encouraging mixed marriages.

The plan introduced an annual allowance of 10,000 yuan (roughly €1,300) to any mixed couples living in the region to encourage them to have children and speed up the cultural assimilation of the region’s Uyghurs – Xinjiang’s 11 million-strong Turkic-speaking Muslim community – and other minority groups.

The programme, however, has been largely unsuccessful despite the financial rewards for those who wish to be involved. As a result, it should come as no surprise that the leadership of the Communist Party in Beijing is now trying a new strategy to eradicate non-Han Chinese culture in the region.

More than half of the 23 million inhabitants of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region – which the locals refer to by its historical name, East Turkestan – are Uyghurs. According to reports, at least 1 million Uyghurs and other individuals who belong to different ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region have been imprisoned in re-education camps established by the Chinese Communist Party.

Unconfirmed reports from the internment camps are deeply disturbing. As a result, the European Parliament recently directed the European External Action Services to investigate the human rights situation in the Xinjiang, which the Parliament said “has continued to deteriorate as credible reports indicate that the network of internment camps that have been set up to arbitrarily detain an estimated 1 million Uyghurs and other ethnic Turkic peoples has continued to expand. The camps constitute a massive effort to culturally assimilate by force an entire ethnic group and rob the Uyghurs of their identity.”

While these tactics are quite shocking, they do not seem to have had the success first envisioned by Beijing In a sign of their grim determination, China’s Communist Party has now introduced a new education policy for the Uyghurs if they refuse to take part in mixed-marriages.

Certain Uyghur students, those lucky enough not to be detained, will now face discrimination when accessing the university. Instead of allocating extra points to members of the country’s ethnic, religious, and language minorities – which is the standard practice in China – the Xinjiang administration has opted to favour children from mixed Han Chinese and Uyghur families.

The regional government doubled the number of bonus points allocated to interethnic students (those having one Han parent) to 20, while students with both parents from the same ethnic minority will see their score decreased by 15 points.

For Uyghur students who want to be among the half that will have the chance to be admitted into China’s higher education institutes this distinction based on parentage has broad ramifications.

The Gaokao examination is taken by Chinese students in their third and final year of high school. It is the sole criterion for admission to Chinese universities. In 2018, around 5 million students passed the Gaokao exam out of the 10 million who sat the test. Chinese statistics on interethnic marriages are not so easily found, but national data from a 2010 census suggests that only 0.2% of Han Chinese and Uyghurs have intermarried, leaving the region’s indigenous Uyghurs at a distinct disadvantage to succeed in their own homeland as they will now be denied the possibility of pursuing a higher education.

The totalitarian, ethnicity-based ideology of the Chinese Communist Party’s policy towards the Uyghurs continues to steadily progress as it scrambles to erase the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities from the cultural landscape.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa led his ruling African National Congress (ANC) party to a comfortable victory in the country’s parliamentary election earlier this month. But engineering the economic recovery that South Africa needs is likely to be much harder.

True, the country’s banks withstood the stresses of the 2008-2009 recession, and the Reserve Bank of South Africa has kept inflation within or near a 3-6% target range for the past 20 years. But a decade of stagnating incomes, rising unemployment, and serial revelations of business wrongdoing and official corruption has fueled widespread public discontent. Little wonder, then, that the share of the vote for both the ANC and its main rival, the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), fell amid a marked decline in turnout and rising support for left- and right-wing nationalist parties.

Moreover, the new ANC-led government will have little room to provide fiscal stimulus. Government debt is rising as a share of GDP, the country’s credit ratings are under critical scrutiny, and huge shortfalls in the balance sheets of state-owned enterprises are straining public finances.

The government’s growth plan must, therefore, go beyond ANC party ideology and narrow orthodoxies. It must emphasize private-sector investment, together with consistent and credible policy reforms, and also aim to redistribute income. And agreement on such a plan’s key elements among a broad range of political leaders and other stakeholders will be crucial to success.

A government-funded research program on employment and inclusive growth, managed by the University of Cape Town’s Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, recently outlined several possible priorities. The central idea, according to Ravi Kanbur of Cornell University, is a “grand bargain” that balances short-term job creation and growth against deeper long-term structural reforms.

Urban infrastructure investment and city development should be immediate priorities because research suggests that these are an important source of upward mobility and rising living standards. Improving basic infrastructure and services will require a mix of public and private financing, as well as improved cost recovery for urban services. But with an ANC-led national government, and three of South Africa’s major cities under DA or coalition rule, political gamesmanship could stall progress.

Accelerating investment in housing is also vital. Government-sponsored housing schemes and upgrading of informal settlements should continue, but the main growth potential lies in easing barriers to private housing investment and co-financed development. Urban housing, land ownership, and associated small-business growth are important avenues for improving family wealth distribution and living standards. These require joint initiatives by government, municipal authorities, financial institutions, and developers.

With South Africa’s unemployment rate currently above 25%, the government must make job creation central to its industrial and urban-development policies. Agriculture, tourism, repair and maintenance services and more labour-intensive manufacturing all have growth potential. But, as Jim O’Neill and Raghuram Rajan have recently argued, investments in geographic areas and community development are more likely to generate lasting productivity and enterprise gains than narrowly targeted sectoral support.

The new government should also consider regulatory changes and enabling measures to support informal employment and small business growth, and should reinforce competition policy to counter incumbents’ market power. Ramaphosa himself, meanwhile, has rightly endorsed a business-led “youth employment service” initiative: this needs to be expanded rapidly as a public-private partnership.

While addressing these immediate priorities, the new government must also push ahead with reforms aimed at strengthening the economy in the longer term. Three measures stand out.

First, South Africa’s biggest challenge is restoring its vertically integrated electricity monopoly, Eskom, to financial health. Long delays in restructuring the energy sector, overstaffing, cost overruns, technical misspecifications in building new coal-fired power plants, and systemic governance failures have brought the state-owned utility close to bankruptcy. Large-scale refinancing must be negotiated, together with an enterprise reorganization that brings competition and market incentives into the power generation sector. Electricity tariffs must rise, and weaknesses in municipal revenue collection need to be addressed.

The restructuring that is required will be complex, costly, and contentious. But, if successful, it will go a long way toward restoring confidence in South Africa’s government and economic prospects.

Second, the incoming government plans to phase in social-insurance reforms aimed at providing comprehensive income security and universal health coverage. These changes include shifts in the balance between private savings and medical insurance arrangements and mandatory funding of statutory benefits. They also involve substantial changes in the way fiscal redistribution works. South Africa would move from “on-budget” funding of means-tested income support for the poor and public provision of health services for the uninsured to separately funded universal programs of income protection and access to health care.

These long-term reforms are needed to reinforce solidarity and reduce inequality and to complement urbanisation and modernisation. But the institution-building required is formidable, and the sequencing of reforms needs careful consideration.

Finally, the new government needs to revitalise education, training, and skills development. Much of what must be done is well understood. Basic reading skills need to be taught properly in the early years, school management must be improved, and the sectorally-organized, levy-based training system should be replaced by skills academies accountable to local business chambers and employers. Centrally-driven standards and curricula are needed, along with greater decentralization of management to foster accountability and adaptation to local needs.

Ramaphosa has a long economic reform agenda and a public impatient for results. His recent decision to revive an expert policy coordination unit in the president’s office is an encouraging sign. But he will need both skill and statesmanship to overcome the corruption and bureaucratic inertia holding back South Africa’s economy.

]]>https://www.neweurope.eu/article/can-ramaphosa-do-it/feed/0WTO’s Director-General says e-commerce must be a force for inclusionhttps://www.neweurope.eu/article/wtos-director-general-says-e-commerce-must-be-a-force-for-inclusion/
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/wtos-director-general-says-e-commerce-must-be-a-force-for-inclusion/#respondThu, 23 May 2019 20:14:36 +0000https://www.neweurope.eu/?post_type=post&p=528863

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Speaking at a meeting of the OECD Ministerial Council in Paris on 23 May, WTO’s Director-General Roberto Azevêdohighlighted that advances in technology are facilitating trade and changing the way we do business today.
Noting the rapid growth in e-commerce and its potential, he also underlined challenges, such as the need to address the digital divide, and added that the WTO has witnessed growing interest in discussing e-commerce issues.

The EIB has signed a €5 million loan with CDC Biodiversité, the subsidiary of the French national promotional bank Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, to support biodiversity compensation services.
This is the first project of this kind in France, and it is backed by a guarantee from the Natural Capital Financing Facility, under which the EIB and the European Commission are supporting projects on nature conservation, biodiversity and climate adaptation.
More than €400 million of new nature conservation investment is expected to be supported by the €125 million Natural Capital Financing Facility by 2021.

]]>https://www.neweurope.eu/article/eib-and-french-cdc-biodiversite-promote-nature-conservation/feed/0Pressure mounts on May to resignhttps://www.neweurope.eu/article/pressure-mounts-on-may-to-resign/
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/pressure-mounts-on-may-to-resign/#respondThu, 23 May 2019 17:34:42 +0000https://www.neweurope.eu/?post_type=post&p=528764

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The pressure is beginning to mount on British Prime Minister Theresa May to resign after the pro-Brexit Speaker of Parliament, Andrea Leadsom, quit after saying she no longer believes the May government can deliver on the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.

A spokesman for May said the government remained “focused on delivering Brexit.”

Leadsom, who ran against May for the leadership of the Conservative party and may be harbouring ambitions to succeed her. She has grown particularly sceptical towards May after the divisive prospect of a second referendum and a fourth attempt at passing the Withdrawal Agreement with Brussels remained on the table.

Conservative backbenchers have been threatening a revolt since May reached out to Labour, offering a Customs Union and the prospect of a second referendum. To her own backbenchers, May offered the ill-defined legally binding deadline of reaching a deal that would resolve the border issue between EU-member Ireland and Northern Ireland, which will remain in the UK.

If the polling is correct, the Conservative Party will come out in fifth in this week’s European elections. May is due to meet the leader of the Conservative so-called 1922 executive committee on Friday, a day after Britain goes to the polls.

]]>https://www.neweurope.eu/article/pressure-mounts-on-may-to-resign/feed/0The case for a new Hanseatic Leaguehttps://www.neweurope.eu/article/the-case-for-a-new-hanseatic-league/
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/the-case-for-a-new-hanseatic-league/#respondThu, 23 May 2019 15:52:18 +0000https://www.neweurope.eu/?post_type=post&p=528848

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With the European Parliament elections upon us, and a new European Commission set to be installed in the autumn, we stand at a perfect juncture to look Janus-like at what has happened, where we are now and assess where the European Union should be heading. Now more than ever there is a need for an EU that is committed to free trade, openness and personal choice.

The EU: democracy’s graveyard?

Within the EU, the belief in liberal democracy and globalisation has been questioned. The 2019 European elections will be held in a climate of uncertainty, discontent and change. The reasons for this are complex and nuanced. All across the EU, voices are being heard on perceived inequalities, falling living standards and reduced opportunities. Ever since the Financial Crisis of 2008, the Euro Crisis of 2010 onwards and the Migration Crisis starting in 2013, voters have been turning to more extreme solutions to local, national and European problems. With national elections across Europe having delivered significant gains for right-wing political parties and nationalists, we need to ask the question: are liberal values, openness and free trade falling out of favour?

From Italy to Poland, Hungary and beyond we are seeing the rule of law diluted and a desire to put up barriers to protect against perceived threats from foreign businesses, labour and money. Many column inches and much ink has been used to describe the decline of liberal democracy in Europe.

Granted the financial crisis of 2008 dented the image of free trade and liberal policies, as has the fact that living standards in Europe are no longer growing at the levels they once did. Elites are seen as out of touch and many feel that popular views are not being expressed in policies. These are serious concerns, and they should be addressed, but it is important to keep a perspective.

Fear the alternatives

After the Second World War, the alternative to fascism was clear and attractive to all. Similarly, during the Soviet occupation of Central and Eastern Europe and the Cold War, liberal democracy was again the natural choice around which to organise states and society. Today, we should once more consider the alternatives. Do European countries really want to install regimes where we see rights eroded and the will of the people increasingly – and counter-intuitively – ignored? Free trade, liberalisation, personal choice and the rule of law need to remain central pillars of our democracies. Just looking at the alternatives underlines this reality.

A new hope

The current period of reflection and soul-searching should be put to good use. One reality is that the smaller states with export-orientated economies who favour free trade, openness and personal choice are losing their champion with the UK leaving the EU. While the UK would take many of these fights in the past, there is now the need for like-minded countries such as the Nordics, Baltics, The Netherlands and Ireland to work together and increase their cooperation to make their voices heard and shape the EU agenda. There has been ad hoc, high-level cooperation on financial issues between these states, but there is a need to expand this across policy areas – from environmental stewardship to the digital single market – while also facilitating a bottom-up approach from business and civil society. In this way, “the new Hanseatic League” as it has been christened will be a vital vehicle in modernising the EU and ensuring that free trade, openness, Atlanticism and personal choice remain front and centre in EU policy-making.

No “Fortress Europe” and no Franco-German closed shop

By contrast, the creation of a “Fortress Europe” would be a disaster for the EU and also send out the wrong signals globally. Despite being faced by a progressively more isolationist and the tariff-wielding US, and a commercially aggressive China, the EU needs to stay true to its liberal democratic heart. After all, there is never a right way to do the wrong thing.

By the same token, the future of Europe cannot be built solely on the outdated concept of a Franco-German axis. The calls to create a European Industrial Policy – with all the terrible trappings of old-style state intervention and French dirigisme – are a worrying sign of what may come to pass if we blindly followed this route. Statism, picking winners and creating national/EU champions would waste resources and ensure that consumers and other businesses lose out. History clearly shows that a lack of competition often leads to higher prices, less choice and poorer products due to a lack of innovation.

In sum, the EU needs to evolve and address an increasing number of internal and external challenges. Free trade, openness and personal choice rest at the heart of the solution to these issues and the Nordics need to partner like-minded countries to promote this agenda.

The European Investment bank has announced two projects that are part of the strategic transport networks designed to improve north-south connections in Europe.
A €300m loan has been guaranteed to Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego for the completion of the A1 motorway via the upgrading of the Tuszyn-Czestochowa section. The EIB has also signed a €400m loan agreement to Polskie Linie Kolejowe for the modernisation of the Poznan-Szczecin section of the E59 railway network.
Besides the EIB loans, both road and railway TEN-T projects have benefited from substantial EU grants, providing important financing for the total costs of the projects.

The world community is actively discussing interference into elections and political processes using digital technologies, Kazakhstan’s President Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev said on 23 May during in his address to participants of the 16th Eurasian Media Forum in Almaty.

“The world community expresses deep concern over the issues of protecting people from unauthorised information leaks. Digital interference in elections and political processes is being actively discussed. People need to be immune to new phenomena and threats,” Information and Public Development Minister Dauren Abayev said.

These and other problems should be studied by the media in order to find comprehensive answers Tokayev stressed, while also adding that “As the current president of Kazakhstan, I am committed to holding honest and democratic elections. Therefore, I welcome the participation of representative delegations of international observers and the media.”

]]>https://www.neweurope.eu/article/kazakhstans-tokayev-says-the-world-is-growing-increasingly-concerned-about-election-interference/feed/0NATO and Israel are right to deepen tieshttps://www.neweurope.eu/article/nato-and-israel-are-right-to-deepen-ties/
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/nato-and-israel-are-right-to-deepen-ties/#respondThu, 23 May 2019 13:15:27 +0000https://www.neweurope.eu/?post_type=post&p=528833

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Israel is fast becoming NATO’s premier partner country. As the alliance’s Mediterranean Dialogue program turns 25 this year, enlisting Jerusalem’s help to tackle today’s security challenges is still a no-brainer: NATO can tap into over seven decades of counterterrorism experience, learn from a cyber powerhouse, and deepen intelligence ties with a tested and vibrant democracy perched on the shores of the Levantine powder keg.

And yet, the partnership, in many ways self-evident, nevertheless had to overcome some major hurdles. While NATO lives by the principle of collective security, Israel must rely on itself to defend its razor-thin 15-kilometre waistline. What’s more, multilateralism is the allies’ lifeblood while the Jewish state tends to associate it with political headaches. Until recently, NATO was no exception to this rule: Only after Turkey finally lifted its six-year veto in 2016 was Israel allowed to open a liaison office at the Brussels headquarters and ink an individual cooperation agreement in 2017.

Three years on, Turkey’s about-face is unlocking the partnership’s full potential. NATO’s leaders aren’t shy about showing off the deepening ties: High-level visits to Israel, like the one of Deputy Secretary-General Rose Gottemoeller in January, are emblematic of the upward trend. In her own words, it was “time well-spent.” After meeting with Israel’s senior brass and government officials, NATO’s number-two canvassed Israel’s northern border by helicopter, hovering just a stone’s throw from Hezbollah’s Lebanese stronghold.

Living at close quarters with radical Islamist terrorists is business as usual for Israel. Iran’s fully-owned proxy Hezbollah today has an estimated 150.000 missiles aimed at Israeli cities. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) can share invaluable experience in asymmetric warfare against terrorist armies that use its own population as human shields and thus can give crucial advice to NATO commanders as they face similar challenges. Israel has pioneered advanced techniques to help protect civilians in residential combat zones, such as giving them advanced warning through text messages or using low-yield devices to warn and prompt civilians to leave buildings designated as military targets.

NATO shifted its attention to the Middle East after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks. Partnering with Israel was already then a natural choice, despite sometimes-fraught relations with Turkey. A founding member of the Mediterranean Dialogue program, Israel signed up in 2008 to NATO’s flagship maritime operation in the Mediterranean Sea, Operation Active Endeavor. In 2017, Israel hosted NATO officials for a five-day counterterrorism training seminar with experts from Israel’s security establishment.

On countless occasions, Israel has fed NATO allies life-saving intelligence. Just last year, Israel prevented a blood bath at a political rally in Paris plotted by diplomats of the Iranian regime. Israeli warnings also foiled an ISIS attack at a soccer match between NATO ally Albania and Israel in 2016. Last year Israel unearthed a treasure-trove of evidence on the nuclear ambitions of Tehran, the world’s foremost state-sponsor of terrorism. The list goes on.

Cyber warfare is increasingly viewed as the Achilles heel of advanced economies. Early on, Israel had to respond to such attacks on its critical infrastructure. Today Israel is a global leader in the field of cybersecurity, its ecosystem the envy of the world. Israel’s enemies have long known this. Its friends are now increasingly benefiting from it.

Last year, Israel’s elite cyber unit 8200 thwarted a potentially harrowing ISIS “air attack” on European soil. Earlier this month, Israel made history by responding in real-time to a Hamas cyber-attack with a conventional air strike. The IDF’s Twitter account quipped: “HamasCyberHQ.exe has been removed.” To be sure, leaders from Tehran to Pyongyang heard loud and clear the crucial cyber defence precedent Israel set for the West.

In a landmark decision in 2014, NATO’s top governing body declared cyberspace an official domain of operations on equal footing with land, sea, and air. Two years prior, NATO had expanded its collective defence clause, Article 5, to apply to cyber-attacks. Today, every exercise must include a cyber component.

Nevertheless, for NATO, building collective cyber capacities is an uphill battle. Only a handful of members closely guard key cyber capabilities. According to Heli Tiirma-Klaar, Estonia’s cybersecurity ambassador, NATO is currently at only 10% cyber readiness. Sharing Israel’s expertise with NATO and fostering dialogue on this emerging domain of warfare can only enhance the alliance’s security.

The benefits are of course mutual. There are key capabilities where NATO can share its knowledge with Israel. To name just one example, working closely with the Energy Security Section of the alliance’s Emerging Security Challenges Division could prove invaluable for Israel’s current and future energy challenges.

There are also potential political dividends for Israel. The closer NATO partnership could help rebuild trust with its once staunch ally Turkey while bolstering the trilateral partnership with Greece and Cyprus. NATO could also fully tap into the Mediterranean Dialogue’s potential to promote relations between Israel and Arab countries. Incidentally, the IDF’s deputy chief of staff Eyal Zamir was in Brussels this week to attend – with Egypt and Jordan – a meeting of NATO’s Military Committee, the alliance’s highest military authority.

In April, Israel participated in the American-led exercise “Allied Spirit” in Hohenfels, Germany along with eight Allies. The symbolism of IDF soldiers standing alongside their peers from NATO countries and singing the national anthem “HaTikva” – “The Hope” – bodes well for the future.

A recent report accuses the controversial human rights NGO Open Dialogue Foundation (ODF), the purpose and activities of which are concealed behind a mask of human rights advocacy, and its head Lyudmyla Kozlovska of having “relationships with and obligations towards agents of the intelligence services of the Russian Federation” making them a tool for soft power intervention, according to an article published by EU Today.

The article reads:

Recently, growing numbers of members of European institutions have become puppets and tools of the hidden political propaganda of controversial human rights NGO Open Dialogue Foundation (ODF), the purpose and activities of which are concealed behind a mask of human rights advocacy.

Who are you, Ms Kozlovska? Following the emergence of the Warsaw-based ODF, certain members of the Council of Europe began to engage with the NGO, and started expressing dissatisfaction with post-Soviet republics, such as Moldova and Kazakhstan.

The head of ODF, Lyudmyla Kozlovska, is a well-known personality among human rights activists and, thanks to alleged financial support from convicted fraudsters and murderers, including Vyacheslav Platon, Mukhtar Ablyazov, Nail Malyutin, and Aslan Gagiyev, has become acquainted with many influential European figures.

Ms Kozlovska (pictured) represents herself as a supporter of civil society, who allegedly protects human rights, but instead acts as a lobbying force on behalf of ODF’s patrons, most of who appear to share something in common; convictions for money laundering. ODF defends these people’s interests on the political platforms of the European Union portraying them as politically persecuted oppositionists. It has been alleged that European politicians have been paid for criticising Moldova and Kazakhstan.

ODF itself was the subject of a special investigation by the Sunday Times, published in April of this year. Journalists concluded that ODF was implicated in the laundering of more than £26 million through Scottish companies, some £1.5 million of which allegedly found its way into ODF coffers. At the same time, Kozlovska is the subject of investigations initiated against her in Poland, Ukraine and Moldova.

On April 21st, 2019, the British Sunday Times published an article containing the main thesis of a report prepared by the Moldovan parliamentary committee… I would like to examine the involvement of the Open Dialog Foundation in the internal affairs of this country and the financing of certain political parties. As reported by the Sunday Times journalists, Moldovan parliamentarians accuse the activists of ODF of acquiring £1.5 million from Scottish front companies in exchange for lobbying for oligarchs. In their opinion, these companies had to “launder” a total of about £26 million, which was intended to finance organisations suspected of cooperating with Russian intelligence and acting to destabilise countries remaining in opposition to the Russian Federation.

A commission of inquiry by the Moldovan Parliament, published last November, concluded that Kozlovska and her NGO were “involved in subversive activities directed against the institutions of the Republic of Moldova, which is funded and orchestrated by special services that are hostile to the state”.

Its report alleged Kozlovska and the ODF had been funded from transactions with Russian military companies banned from trading in America and the EU under international sanctions, as well as from “the supply of military equipment to states involved in regional conflicts”. Payments also came from offshore areas of dubious unknown routes and origins and from “Laundromat” money-laundering schemes, it said.

The report added: “The sophisticated mechanism through which the ODF is funded bears all the hallmarks of a money-laundering scheme and indicates practices involving financial intelligence which only the special services employ.

In reality, the ODF and Lyudmyla Kozlovska are a vehicle for lobbying and influencing various international institutions and for protecting and furthering the interests of certain persons with a dubious past, usually with considerable wealth originating from fraud and money laundering, contrary to the law.

Moldovan Parliament, November 2018

The report accuses the ODF and Kozlovska of having “relationships with and obligations towards agents of the intelligence services of the Russian Federation and are dependent on them . . . making them a tool for soft power intervention which is used by the special services of the Russian Federation in the hybrid war that has begun to be waged against states regarded by it as enemies of the geopolitical interests of the Russian Federation in Eastern Europe”.

Open Dialogue and MPs. A former employee of the ODF, who for obvious reasons remains anonymous, has stated that the main focus of the foundation is on Kazakhstan. Kazakh oligarch Mukhtar Ablyazov, who was convicted of the embezzlement of some $7.6 billion from Kazakhstan’s BTA bank, as well as the murder of his predecessor, is trying through Kozlovska to create a network within the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Their goal is to create a climate of suspicion based on slander and to form a network of MPs who will interfere in the political processes in Kazakhstan. It can be said that the Foundation partially managed to form an opinion among some MPs that Ablyazov and his associates are fighters for democracy, and that in Kazakhstan there is still a dictatorial regime.

Meanwhile, French MEP Nicolas Bay at a Public Hearing of the European Parliament’s Special committee on financial crimes, tax evasion and tax avoidance (known as TAX3) openly named Ablyazov of having “launched a foundation called Open Dialogue… there are now very real questions about the funding of the activities of that Foundation”.

“All too often” the deputy continued, “perpetrators of white-collar crimes are able to pass themselves off as victims”, referring to ODF’s presentation of Ablyazov and others implicated in his crimes, as persecuted political oppositionists, and victims of human rights violations.

Italian Senator Roberto Rampi, German MP Frank Schwabe, Austrian Member of Parliament Stefan Schennach, as well as Dutch parliamentarian Pieter Omtzigt, however, have accepted ODF’s version of reality.

Another figure of interest in this story is president of the Italian League for Human Rights rights Antonio Stango who last year visited Kazakh businessman Iskander Yerimbetov, who is currently under investigation on suspicion of money laundering in jail. Yerimbetov and his sister Bota Jardemalie, a former sidekick of Ablyazov and currently resident in Brussels. Jardemalie is also accused of money laundering offences.

For instance, Frank Schwabe, who is a chair of Socialists, Democrats and Greens Group in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, actively campaigns among party members to support all Kozlovska’s initiatives.

He appears indifferent to the facts that the head of ODF is suspected of having connections with the Kremlin and the Foundation itself is involved in money laundering activity.

Schwabe helped Kozlovska obtain a temporary visa to Germany, after Poland’s Internal Security Agency expressed “serious doubts” about the financing of ODF, placing her on a Schengen blacklist, stating that she poses a security threat following allegations that she works for Russian interests.

Some of those with whom ODF cooperates are not known for the consistency of their views. Dutch politician Pieter Omtzigt, who become a member of the PACE in 2010, at first expressed his concern about the political situation in Armenia during the first two years of his deputy. Suddenly, in 2012, he completely abandoned his previous statements and began to criticise Azerbaijan, expressing concern about the human rights situation in the country.

Austrian MP Stefan Schennach, another supporter of Ablyazov and Kozlovska, was himself involved in a corruption scandal in the framework of PACE, according to the April 2018 report of the Independent Investigation Body on the allegations of corruption within the Parliamentary Assembly.

Schennach was found to have breached the Code of Conduct for rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly, and the Code of Conduct of the Monitoring Committee, as well as the PACE Code of Conduct.

In addition, the Centre for the Study of Corruption and Organised Crime (OCCRP), in collaboration with Transparency International and several European media organisations, published a report, which claims that the ruling elite of Baku through fictitious companies “laundered” a $2.9 billion to bribe European politicians and purchase luxury goods.

The establishment of partnerships between deputies belonging to one or more parliamentary groups can give a positive result. It is very important when different movements unite to protect rights, promote democracy and develop the system of government, overcoming political differences.

It is absolutely normal when representatives of civil society or non-governmental organisations participate in political debates and from time to time cooperate with parliamentarians. However, the above facts concerning the “human rights” activities of the above-mentioned MPs are far from their true desire to protect the great and noble ideals of the great European family.

In general, the statements of such politicians are used by the oligarchs Platon and Ablyazov in the struggle for power. It is clearly in the public interest to inquire into the connections of parliamentarians with controversial NGOs, such as ODF. As a result of such connections trust in the Council of Europe has been severely undermined.

The European Investment Bank and the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy have announced the 20 shortlisted cities of the Global Climate City Challenge, at the International Conference on Climate Action, ICCA 2019, in Heidelberg, Germany.
The Challenge received 145 project proposals with total investment opportunities of over €5 billion. The first 20 shortlisted cities have investment potential of €1.4 billion. The proposals range from e-mobility, waste, to energy, urban greening, resilience and climate adaptation measures.
The first round of 6 cities whose projects will be supported will be announced at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York on 23rd September.

]]>https://www.neweurope.eu/article/global-climate-city-challenge-to-support-climate-action-projects/feed/0The challenge of being an ambassador to Ukrainehttps://www.neweurope.eu/article/the-challenge-of-being-an-ambassador-to-ukraine/
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/the-challenge-of-being-an-ambassador-to-ukraine/#respondThu, 23 May 2019 12:22:00 +0000https://www.neweurope.eu/?post_type=post&p=528813

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Among the biggest challenges for foreign diplomats is an election year in Ukraine. The unpredictability that never wanes, even after the results are in, offers very fertile ground for developing professional skills of the highest order –The gift of clairvoyance to report on the political situation; Levitation above issues that have no direct answer; Mind-reading when the new president offers no clear direction.

Surely a diplomatic appointment to Ukraine is the dream job…

Volodymyr Zelensky won the presidential election. During his inauguration, he announced that he was dissolving the legislature and calling snap elections three months ahead of schedule, which prompted the current prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, to promptly tendered his resignation.

Pollsters are already saying that Zelensky’s party, Servant of the People, will pick up 40% of the vote in the parliamentary election. It’s unlikely that it would enjoy such success in an October vote when the honeymoon between the president and the people would be over. Of course, just as in his presidential campaign, neither the line-up nor the platform of Servant of the People is known.

This turns the task of predicting political developments in Ukraine into an impenetrable guessing game for foreign diplomats.

It never was easy for ambassadors to keep their governments interested in Ukraine. The home front with its protests, terrorist acts, cyber attacks, Brexit, the radical right and radical left – even a border wall – meant squeezing Ukraine into that kind of agenda was quite the challenge.

Finding arguments in support of Ukraine was harder still for even the most experienced diplomat. While living here, disenchantment with the slow reforms, ineffective anti-corruption agencies, and a very flawed judiciary are dominated by a genuine affection for those who stood on the Maidan more than five years ago and who watch their loved ones go to war but want peace and prosperity at the same time.

Now everybody wants to hear what their ambassador has to say.

Will Ukraine keep working to join Europe, not just geographically but psychologically? Will its army remain a top priority and keep adopting NATO standards? Or will the Russian border suddenly appear in unexpected places on the map?

Will the new administration think more about the economy and jobs, about improving the investment climate, about keeping the National Bank of Ukraine independent? Will they continue reforming and not let down those Western leaders who have put so much into Ukraine and whose success is their personal success story? Or will they decide to negotiate directly with Vladimir Putin?

Will they do the right thing so that foreign governments keep extending sanctions against Russia and permanent reps keep supporting the peace process, push for occupied Crimea to be returned to Ukraine, and stop the development of Nord Stream-2, not just for Kyiv’s benefit but also for Europe’s own security?

The answer is simple. Born in the blood of the Euromaidan Revolution, Ukraine’s civil society will not allow reforms to be rolled back or any steps taken to spoil the goodwill they earned at such a price.

A nation that values the principles on which the EU was built more than some EU citizens will not allow its country to be sidetracked from the European and Euro-Atlantic course that is enshrined in their constitution.

Horst Köhler, Personal Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the Western Sahara peace process has announced his resignation for personal reasons.
During his mandate, he has contributed to bringing a new dynamism to the Western Sahara process. The Western Sahara conflict has lasted for a long time, causing political friction in the region and acting as an impediment to regional cooperation, thus leading to suffering among the displaced people.
The UN Secretary-General will appoint his successor in a way that the momentum in the process will be sustained.

Dutch junior Justice Minister Mark Harbers resigned on 21 May over a government report on crime by asylum seekers that were published last week and was widely condemned as misleading.

The report refers to crime by asylum seekers in The Netherlands in 2018 that included misdemeanours such as shoplifting and bike theft into separate categories. but grouped crimes including rape and murder under “other,” thereby underreporting them.

“Other” included 79 cases of potential sex crimes – including 47 sexual assault cases – 31 incidents of murder, five of child abuse, four alleged rapes and other violent offences, according to the daily Telegraaf. Overall, there were 1,000 “other” cases.

The majority of crimes reported were considered petty crimes, including pickpocketing, physical abuse, and intimidation.

Harbers admitted that the ministry had been warned not to come up with a top 10 crimes for which asylum seekers were suspects because that meant serious criminal cases would be hidden from the public.

Users of the popular dating app Tinder in France and Germany are seeing ads for the European Parliamentary elections after Tinder partnered with the European Parliament’s #thistimeimvoting campaign to encourage voters to take part in the pan-European vote.

The ads were co-created with the European Parliament in both countries, according to a Tinder communications representative who confirmed the information to New Europe. Users in the two countries are now seeing ads that ask “Who will be your match for the next 5 years?” in French and German. The advertisements pop up as profiles on Tinder and users are expected to swipe right and left on potential match profiles.

Both Germany and France will hold European Parliament elections on 26 May. During the last European Parliament election, voter turnout is Germany and France was 48.1% and 42.43%, respectively. Voter turnout across the entire European Union was an average of 42.61, which has been steadily decreasing since the first European Parliament elections in 1979.

]]>https://www.neweurope.eu/article/european-elections-want-you-to-swipe-right/feed/0Rutte tells NE ‘I am absolutely not a candidate for any job in Brussels’https://www.neweurope.eu/article/rutte-tells-ne-i-am-absolutely-not-a-candidate-for-any-job-in-brussels/
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/rutte-tells-ne-i-am-absolutely-not-a-candidate-for-any-job-in-brussels/#respondThu, 23 May 2019 11:50:17 +0000https://www.neweurope.eu/?post_type=post&p=528796

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Hoping for a high turnout, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte flatly rejected rumours that he is angling one of the EU top jobs after the 23-26 May European elections.

Arriving by bicycle to vote at a primary school in The Hague where he used to be a student, Rutte spoke to New Europe about his hopes that the election turnout would be higher than 40%. “I hope for a high turnout, which was only 40% last time, so I hope this time it is higher. I hope my party will do well, but we will have to wait for tonight, the polls are promising. Let’s see what happens.”

Following the last EU leaders’ last meeting in Sibiu, Romania, some of the EU’s key leaders, as well as several outgoing politicians, floated the idea that they would like to see Rutte take over the presidency of the European Council from Donald Tusk, whose term in office is due to expire.

Rutte, however, left no room for speculation. “No. I am absolutely, definitely, positively not a candidate for any job in Brussels. I will stay as a member of the European Council, which means that I will stay on as the prime minister, here.”

Asked about the next day for the EU after the crucial elections, Rutte suggested that the bloc “has to realise that the EU needs to reform” by opting for a more focused agenda and opposing any member state’s departure from the EU, Rutte also said he hopes for a Europe with less democracy and a single seat for the European Parliament.

Rutte’s main opponent, Forum for Democracy leader Thierry Baudet, cast his vote in an Amsterdam church. His debate with Rutte on Wednesday attracted 1.5 million viewers.

According to the first polls, the turnout is slightly lower than five years ago, with an estimated 7% of voters showing up by 10:30, which is 1% lower than in 2014 and 2% below the same time in 2009.

The Netherlands and UK are the only two EU members voting on Thursday, with the majority of the other member states casting their votes on Sunday.

The breakdown of the centre-right-far-right government comes after the leader of the Freedom Party and vice-chancellor, Heinz-Christian Strache, was embroiled in a political corruption scandal.

Only days before Austria going to the polls for the European elections, a 2017 video shot at the island of Ibiza was released where Strache is seen promising lucrative government contracts in exchange for media support for his party. A woman posing as the niece of a powerful Russian oligarch promises to take over a newspaper to change its editorial line to a more pro-Russian stance, in exchange for public procurement contracts.

The Austrian government now faces a no-confidence vote while Interior Minister Herbert Kickl will be replaced by former Supreme Court President Eckart Ratz. The new Minister of Defence will be Lieutenant-General Johann Luif; the new minister of Labour and Social Affairs will be Walter Pöltner, a former regional social democratic politician; and the incoming transport minister will be former railway company executive Valerie Hackl.

After the consultations at regional level with African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, EU’s Chief Negotiator Neven Mimica and Togolese Minister Robert Dussey met in Brussels on 23 May to discuss the outline for the future ACP-EU agreement.
The so-called Cotonou Agreement that is currently governing EU-ACP relations is due to expire in 2020. Negotiations on a new ACP-EU Partnership were launched in New York on 28 September 2018 in the margins of the United Nations General Assembly.
The EU and ACP negotiating teams work on the agreement that covers all 79 countries (also referred to as “the common foundation”) while talks on the specific regional partnerships progress.

Germany will pay €40 billion to fund the economic transition from coal to more environmentally friendly forms of energy.

Currently, coal and lignite account for 40% of German electricity production. The current government plan envisages the end of coal-generated energy production by 2038.

The money will pay for targeted action following the closure of coal mines in eastern Germany and the Rhineland, compensating factories and supporting the workforce. “This is the first time in postwar history that we are responding to structural change before the change actually happens,” economy minister Peter Altmaier said.

The €40 billion fund will pay for a cluster of infrastructure projects in expected regions, including motorway and railway links, internet and telephone coverage, whilst also shifting 5,000 public service jobs to affected regions.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenbergaddressed a conference at the National Cyber Security Center on 23 May in London on how the Alliance plans to counter cyber threats, which he said are fundamentally changing the nature of warfare and that NATO is adapting its countermeasures by strengthening its capabilities and increasing its resources.

Stoltenberg specifically warnedRussia and other potential foes that NATO is ready to use all means at its disposal to respond to cyber attacks.

“For deterrence to have full effect, potential attackers must know we are not limited to respond in cyberspace when we are attacked,” said Stoltenberg.

Western allies accuse Moscow of trying to sway the outcome of the 2016 US presidential vote and using cyber technology to cripple the infrastructure of neighbouring Ukraine.

The European Union recently adopted the power to impose targeted restrictive measures to deter and respond to cyber attacks. Stoltenberg refused to say what exactly steps might be taken by NATO in the event of a new Russian cyber attack, but said, “We can and will use the full range of capabilities at our disposal.”

The Africa Transport and Connectivity Task Force met in Leipzig, Germany and brought together leaders and experts from public and private sectors. The initiative was a part of the new “Africa-Europe Alliance for Sustainable Investment and Jobs” as announced by Commission President Juncker.
It focused on three key areas: air transport, road safety and connectivity, with the aim to support pan-African multi-modal transport corridor development, address sector inefficiencies and structural reforms and boost public and private investment.

Debates about inflation in advanced economies have changed remarkably over the past decades. Setting aside (mis)measurement issues, concerns about debilitatingly high inflation and the excessive power of bond markets are long gone, and the worry now is that excessively low inflation may hamper growth.

Moreover, while persistently subdued – and, on nearly $11 trillion of global bonds, negative – interest rates may be causing resource misallocations and undercutting long-term financial security for households, elevated asset prices have heightened the risk of future financial instability. Also, investors have become highly (and happily) dependent on central banks, when they should be prudently more fearful of them.

In search of new ways to produce higher inflation, the major central banks have tended to favour a cyclical mindset, making frequent references to insufficient aggregate demand. But what if that is the wrong lens through which to view current conditions, and we are actually in the middle of a multi-stage process in which strong disinflationary supply-side forces eventually give way to the return of higher inflation? In that case, monetary policymakers and market participants would need to consider quite a different opportunity-risk paradigm than the one currently being pursued.

To be sure, after coming close to central banks’ 2% target in 2018, core inflation rates in Europe and the United States have since been declining. The conventional measure of market expectations for inflation – the break-even rate on five-year US Treasuries – remains stubbornly below target, even though the six-month moving average pace of job creation is almost 50% above the historical level needed to absorb new labour-market entrants so deep in the economic cycle. Though the US unemployment rate (3.6%) is at its lowest level in around five decades, the labour-force participation rate (62.8%) also remains relatively low.

Owing to the persistence of low inflation, monetary policies have remained ultra-loose for an unusually long time, raising concerns that the US or Europe may succumb to “Japanification” as consumers postpone purchases and companies reduce investment outlays. So far, that risk has led to protractedly low or negative (in the case of the European Central Bank) policy rates and bloated central-bank balance sheets, despite the potentially deleterious effects of such policies on the integrity of the financial system.

In fact, some economic observers favour the ECB not just maintaining negative interest rates, but also restarting asset purchases under its quantitative easing (QE) program. Likewise, there are those who want the US Federal Reserve to implement an “insurance cut,” despite indicators suggesting that this will be another year of solid economic growth and job creation. Meanwhile, central banks have begun to look beyond their existing toolkits (traditional and unconventional) for new ways to spur economy-wide price increases, such as by raising the inflation target, either directly or by pursuing an average and allowing for deviations over time.

But today’s surprisingly low inflation also appears to be linked to larger structural forces, which means that it’s not rooted only in insufficient aggregate demand. Technological innovations – particularly those related to artificial intelligence, big data, and mobility – have ushered in a more generalized breakdown of traditional economic relationships and an erosion of pricing power.

Taken together, I call these structural forces the Amazon/Google/Uber effect. While the Amazon model pushes down prices by allowing consumers to bypass more expensive intermediaries, Google undercuts companies’ pricing power by reducing search costs, and Uber brings existing assets into the marketplace, further eroding established firms’ pricing power.

The Amazon/Google/Uber effect has turbocharged a disinflationary process that began with the acceleration of globalisation, bringing far more low-cost production online and reducing the power of organized labour in advanced economies (as has the gig economy more recently). But while these trends will most continue for now, they are likely to confront countervailing inflationary influences that have yet to reach critical mass: the slack in the labour market is diminishing every month, and increased industrial concentration is giving some companies, especially in the technology sector, far greater pricing power.

Now, consider those trends in the context of today’s changing political landscape. Fueled by understandable anger over inequality (of income, wealth, and opportunity), more politicians are embracing populism, with promises of more active fiscal management and measures to curb the power of capital in favour of labour. At the same time, there is growing political pressure on central banks to bypass the asset channel (that is, QE bond purchases) and inject liquidity directly into the economy.

Economic anxieties are also driving anti-globalisation politics. The weaponization of economic-policy tools such as tariffs and other trade measures is risking a fragmentation of global economic and financial relationships, favouring higher prices, and compelling a greater degree of more costly self-insurance by companies and consumers. At the same time, as expectations of continued low inflation become more entrenched, an upward price shock could expose vulnerabilities and increase the risk of policy mistakes and market accidents.

Considering how these competing forces are likely to play out over time, policymakers and investors should not rule out a return of inflation over time. Looking ahead, we will likely continue experiencing an initial stage in which the Amazon/Google/Uber effect remains dominant. But that may well be followed by a second stage in which tight labour markets, populist nationalism, and industry concentration begin to offset the one-time structural effects of new technologies being widely adopted. And in a third stage, the possible onset of higher inflation may catch policymakers and investors by surprise, producing excessive reactions that make a bad situation worse.

As with most paradigm shifts, there can be little certainty regarding the timing of this scenario. But, either way, policymakers in advanced economies must recognise that their inflation outlook is subject to a wider range of dynamic possibilities than they have considered so far. Focusing too much on the cyclical, rather than the structural, could pose serious risks to future economic wellbeing and financial stability. The longer we wait to broaden the prevailing mindset, the more likely we are to advance to the next stages of an inflationary process in which the impact of an exciting one-and-done technological event gives way to some old and more familiar tendencies.

]]>https://www.neweurope.eu/article/how-inflation-could-return/feed/0Polls open in The Netherlands kicking off 4-days of EU electionshttps://www.neweurope.eu/article/polls-open-in-the-netherlands-kicking-off-4-days-of-eu-elections/
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/polls-open-in-the-netherlands-kicking-off-4-days-of-eu-elections/#respondThu, 23 May 2019 07:41:09 +0000https://www.neweurope.eu/?post_type=post&p=528753

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Polls for the elections to the European Parliament have opened in The Netherlands marking the starting four days of voting across the 28-member EU.

The UK starts voting half an hour later, making the duo the only member states that vote on a Thursday.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is fighting to retain his position two years after defeating right-wing populist Geert Wilders, whohas seen his support slip by 5% to a decade-low, a clear sign that his message has lost some of its momenta.

Thierry Baudet’s Forum for Democracy, with just 2%of the vote in the 2017 general election, is currently polling at 15%. Hours before the polls opened, Rutte and Baudet clashed in a TV debate. If Dutch polls are accurate, Baudet’s Forum could pick up five of the 26 Dutch seats in the 751-seat EU plenary.

During the debate, Rutte said Baudet had a dangerously naive view of Russia after Baudet said he did not think that Moscow presents any geopolitical threat to the West.

Baudet compared outgoing European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to Adolf Hitler and Napoleon in their dislike of Russia, stressing that the ” power-hungry of Europe legitimise the centralisation of power in Brussels because of some great enemy (Russia) and I don’t see it”.

“These elections hinge on the question of whether or not the largest party in The Netherlands is one that wants Nexit,” Rutte said while suggesting that if Baudet wins, it will be then possible that The Netherlands would follow the UK and withdraw from the European Union. “It would be bad for our security and stability if such a party became the largest (Dutch party) in the European Parliament,” Rutte added.

Across the bloc, far-right parties are expected again to increase their seats by up to at least 20% in the vote.

In the Bulgarian village Kirkovo on 22 May, Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Boyko Borrisov hosted his Greek counterpart Alexis Tsipras at a ceremony to launch the 180-kilometre Interconnector Greece Bulgaria (IGB) pipeline, aiming to reduce the Balkan’s gas reliance on Russia by bringing gas to the region from Azerbaijan.

Borrisov called the IGB a project of “strategic importance” not only for Bulgaria and Greece but for the whole of Europe, including the countries in the Western Balkans, noting that the pipeline “will lead to real diversification of gas supplies.”

Greek Energy Minister George Stathakis, who attended the ceremony with his Bulgarian counterpart Temenuzhka Petkova, reminded that Greek companies would construct the pipeline. “It’s a historical moment for the Balkans but also for the wider region of southeast Europe. We’re laying the foundation for a unified gas market in our area, securing at the same time, the region’s energy supply,” he said.

The Greek energy minister took time to thank Petkova “for excellent cooperation” to implement this project.

Earlier this month, ICGB AD, the company that will construct, own and operate the IGB has chosen after a tender Greece’s J&P AVAX to construct the pipeline.

IGB is supported by the European Union since it will enhance the security of supply and ensuring the diversification of gas supplies for Bulgaria and the Southeast Europe Region.

The IGB gas pipeline, which will be connected with the Greek national gas transmission system in the area of Komotini and with the Bulgarian national gas transmission system in the area of Stara Zagora, will have a capacity up to 3 billion cubic metres in the direction from Greece to Bulgaria.

Depending on the interest from the market and the capacities of the neighbouring gas transmission systems, the pipeline is designed for increasing its capacity up to 5 billion cubic metres for following up the market evolution thus allowing physical reverse flow (from Bulgaria to Greece) with the additional installation of a compressor station. A Memorandum for cooperation between ICGB and the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) has been signed concerning joint actions in relation to the future connection between the IGB pipeline and TAP.